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The Constitutional Court and Control of Presidential Extraordinary Powers in Colombia
The paper analyzes the attempts of Colombian Constitutional Court to control the abuse of presidential emergency powers in the last decade. After describing the dilemmas that governmental emergency powers pose to constitutional regimes and explaining some particularities of Colombian (a democracy under permanent emergency), the article focuses on the efforts of the Constitutional Court to exercise a ?material? control of the declaration of a state of emergency by the President. According to this legal doctrine, it is the duty of the Court to analyze if the facts invoked by the government constitute a crisis severe enough to justify the use of emergency powers. The article shows that the Court has exercised this material control in a quite strict way and has nullified several declarations of a state of emergency by different presidents. The article tries then to analyze how this form of judicial review has been possible in a country like Colombia, with a precarious democracy and a cruel armed conflict. The article describes also the impact of this form of judicial control in Colombian politics and offer some more general conclusions based on Colombian experience.
Por: Rodrigo Uprimny Yepes | December 12, 2005
El artículo analiza los alcances y límites de las tentativas de la Corte Constitucional colombiana por controlar el abuso de los estados de excepción. Luego de mostrar los dilemas que plantean los estados e excepción a los regímenes constitucionales, el artículo describe el contexto colombiano (una democracia pero en estado permanente de emergencia) y presenta la forma como la Corte Constitucional ha adelantado, desde 1992, un control ?material? de la declaratoria de los estados de excepción por el presidente, según la cual, es deber del juez constitucional examinar si los hechos invocados por el gobierno constituyen o no una crisis suficiente para legitimar el uso de los poderes de excepción. El artículo trata de explicar como ese control ha sido posible en una democracia precaria y con conflicto armado como la colombiana y cuáles efectos podrían atribuirse a ese control.
